04/20/2010

We are helping CUES look for the credit union industry's best and brightest!

We are partnering with the Credit Union Executives Society to launch “Next Top Credit Union Exec,” a program for the industry’s emerging leaders modeled after our popular Young & Free program.

The Next Top Credit Union Exec contest searches for emerging leaders from within the credit union industry. Credit union employees 35 and under (or those new to the financial services industry) apply by creating a 60-second video about themselves and a project they are working on, a project they are planning, or an idea they have for their credit union. All videos will be on display at www.NextTopCreditUnionExec.com.

“Young & Free has found a recipe for success in searching for young credit union members, and we are excited to use the same format to seek out creative and smart young professionals from within the credit union industry,” said Dale Schumacher, chairman, CUES’ board of directors and president/CEO, Tampa Bay Federal Credit Union, Tampa, Fla.

Interested participants can apply by June 1, 2010, at www.NextTopCreditUnionExec.com. Applicants will be organized according to six geographical regions. The industry and online public will vote for their favorite applicant in each region from June 4–14, 2010. The applicant in each region who receives the most votes will become a Regional Finalist for the Next Top Credit Union Exec and will receive a reward package valued at $5,000.

The six Regional Finalists will present on the progress of their project, program or idea, at CUES’ CEO/Executive Team Network in Dallas, November 7–10, 2010. The finalist who scores the highest via a combination of a judging panel, audience and online votes will receive the title Next Top Credit Union Exec and an educational package valued at $20,000.

“We can’t wait to watch how this unfolds. There are so many talented young professionals within our industry, and our hope is that we reveal the breadth of our emerging leaders through this contest,” added Schumacher. ”Plus, we feel the prize package is one that can take our young professionals to the next level of leadership within their organizations.”

In addition, CUES is launching a new membership, CUES NextGen, designed specifically for members 35 and under. Learn more about the CUES NextGen membership and the Next Top Credit Union Exec contest.

This program has been lots of fun to work on and we are really looking forward to seeing how it plays out. I'm sure you know someone at your credit union who would make an excellent candidate!

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12/03/2009

Credit unions listen up: young adults want respect, money and singing!

By Tim McAlpine

During the voting phase of our search for Young & Free Spokesters, we issue an assignment. Complete a three-minute video that answers the question, "What do young people want from their financial institutions?"

There are now 12 such videos. One, two, three in Texas. Four, five, six in South Carolina. Seven, eight, nine in Alberta. They are all fantastic and provide worthwhile insight for those credit unions interested in attracting the next generation of members.

We can now add 10 through 12 in Alabama. They are presented here for your viewing and learning pleasure.

First up is Chris Anderson and his Young & Free Musical.

Second is Goose Gossett and his creative use of Skype.

And finally, Bryan Hall takes his questions to the street.

Learn anything? I do, every time I view these challenge videos.

Even though there are now well over 500 videos that have been produced for Young & Free, I still grin from ear to ear and get choked up seeing the passion, energy and talent that young people pour into their videos.

Awesome.

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03/17/2009

Young & Free South Carolina at 45 days old: let's check the numbers!

By Tim McAlpine

We launched Young & Free South Carolina powered by South Carolina Federal Credit Union on February 2. Young & Free Alberta and Young & Free Texas have been very successful and are definitely two tough acts to follow. We went in with modest expectations given that the Charleston area is much smaller than Edmonton and Houston and our supporting media buy was smaller in South Carolina.

Well, the last 45 days has been an absolute blur of activity and we can hardly keep up with the action. Now that the application phase is officially closed, here are some highlights:

• 101 blog posts
• 27 applicants
• 42 extra activities by all applicants*
• 2,435 members of applicants' Facebook groups**
• 1,870 blog comments
• 16,251 visits
• 9,052 absolute unique visitors

To put this into perspective, here are the stats for the same categories from the first 45 days of Alberta's first year:

• 24 blog posts
• 11 applicants
• 2 extra activities by all applicants*
• 145 members of applicants' Facebook groups**
• 162 blog comments
• 9,420 visits
• 6,548 absolute unique visitors

And here are the Texas stats for the same period of time:

• 34 blog posts
• 11 applicants
• 9 extra activities by all applicants*
• 560 members of applicants' Facebook groups**
• 482 blog comments
• 8,970 visits
• 6,990 absolute unique visitors

In South Carolina, we have five applicants who have generated more than 100 comments on their application blog posts. Blog comments are not the be all end all, but they certainly give an indication of visitor engagement.

• Darrell Brace with 313
• Kelly Gaskins with 186
• Josh Sutherland with 173
• Kyle Whitcroft with 141
• Gloria Hiatt with 135

I never thought DeAndre' Upshaw's winning application in Texas with 218 comments would ever be topped.

Without disclosing all of the stats, account openings have been equally impressive in South Carolina.

What's the difference?

Our Alberta and Texas partners are both great and both are taking Young & Free very seriously as important strategic initiatives. The same can be said about our South Carolina partners.

Is there something in the South Carolina water? I think there are a few small things that have made the difference in South Carolina that we will take forward to future Young & Free Spokesperson searches.

• Partnering with a local radio station to take Young & Free on as their own promotion has been invaluable. Here is a link to just some of the segments that 95SX has dedicated to Young & Free SC.
• Having a public relations expert on staff at the credit union has proven to be very powerful and has better enabled us to take advantage of opportunities as they have come up.
• An aggressive sales culture has fired up an army of word-of-mouth advocates within the credit union.
• The MY Accounts product suite with online account opening has made for a very compelling offer.
• And perhaps the most significant difference is the current state of the economy. It has made the Y&F Spokesperson job offer even more desirable. It's sobering to see the young talent pool that is currently looking for work.

What thrills me the most is that the Young & Free recipe for success is now working extremely well in three different regions. On a personal note, I am getting so much more satisfaction perfecting and refining this one initiative than I have ever had producing one-time-use, three-month campaigns.

On Monday, March 23, we reveal the top three and open the public voting. I expect the action will really kick into high gear!

*Extra activities include addition videos, Facebook groups, personal blogs, Twitter accounts, 12-second videos, Flickr photostreams, podcasts among other things
**These are the total members from the Facebook groups that we know about – there are likely far more

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11/24/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 5: should you require a log-in to participate?

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward + Part 4: jump start your program

The next three parts of this series are really going to get into the meat of running your challenge marketing program, but first I want to use this post to discuss whether or not you should require a user to set up an account and profile to participate on your website.

What are our three example sites doing?

Three different approaches for three very different challenges.

• On Young & Free Alberta, there are no user accounts. All content and interactions on the site are available to every visitor.
   
• On Change Everything, there are a few activities that you can do that do not require you to be logged in. These include viewing all of the content, voting on the latest poll and commenting on blog posts. Every other interaction is only available to members of the site.
   
• On What Are You Saving For?, if you are not a site member, you can only view the content. All interactions are only available to members of the site.

You better have a very compelling reason to make people log in

The social web is maturing and becoming more mainstream. Almost everyone seems to have a Facebook account. I personally have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, Friendfeed, SlideShare, Brightkite, Digg, LinkedIn, Evernote, Google, 12 Seconds, Wordpress, Blogger, Remember the Milk, Wesabe, Flickr and a few more that I have forgotten about.

The social applications listed in the paragraph above have useful functionality, significant financial backing, large dedicated development staffs and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of registered users. I am involved in many of these services because friends sent me invitations or there are people there that I want to connect with and keep in touch with.

None of these sites are the marketing property of a corporation that is using the platform to try to sell me its products.

I have user accounts on Amazon, Apple and plenty of other e-commerce sites—all of which are definitely trying to sell me something. I also have accounts for my five-year-old son on social networks sponsored by Hot Wheels, Lego and Webkinz—three corporations with incredible marketing and undeniable emotional brand hooks.

Every one of these services listed above offers significant value to the members that are signed-in. This is an extremely important fact to remember if you are considering requiring your participants to set up a user account on your site.

The only corporate-sponsored social networks that I have accounts on are Banktastic, because it offers an attractive value proposition for me in my chosen profession, and Change Everything, because Vancity is a major player in our marketplace and I wanted to see what the site was all about.

Internet users are over-subscribed

I know that I am not a typical Internet user, but I do believe that Internet users in general are over-subscribed to social applications that they rarely use.

I strongly believe that very few credit unions are capable of successfully pulling off their own sponsored social network. In fact, Vancity may be the only one. Change Everything is a glowing example of a vibrant, thriving credit-union-sponsored social network. It has more than 4,000 user accounts and boasts more than 8,000 daily visitors. However, Change Everything has the backing of a $12 billion credit union with 400,000 members and the site debuted more than two years ago before the proliferation of the countless new Web 2.0 sites that are commanding everyone's attention. It's also worth noting that only a handful of community members sign in each day.

It could be argued that What Are You Saving For? is a credit-union-sponsored social network. I agree to a certain extent—you have to create a user account to participate in the site and even to comment on blog posts—however, WAYSF really is a tightly integrated support group for a real-world product more than it is a social network.

As Matt said in the comments of part 3, "We allow members to set their savings goal online or offline. When a savings goal is set, we enter it in the core processor, write the goal on a WAYSF pig graphic to be displayed publicly in-branch and encourage the member to share their story on our blog. This way, no matter where the member conducts his or her business—offline, online or at multiple branches—staff, members and the public can access and share their goal and associated progress toward that goal."

People are not stumbling upon WAYSF and setting up an account. Credit union employees, as trusted advisors, are introducing the site to members and helping them get set up. This is a big difference.

Reasons to require a log-in

On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons to want people to become members of your website. Site visitors who take the time to set up an account and become site members are more likely to return and to participate again in the future. Also, site members may feel more connected to your initiative and be more inclined to tell others about it compared to passive site visitors.

In addition, you are able to give logged-in site members permission to actually create content. For instance, members of Change Everything can blog and create changes on the site. And members of What Are You Saving For? can create and display their savings goals. By allowing site members to be creators it solves one of the biggest challenges in maintaining any type of social media website—the steady creation of creative and compelling content.

For purely selfish reasons, requiring site visitors to sign up for an account can give your credit union more insight into who your visitors are. And depending on how you design your user-account-activation process, you can also ask for permission to communicate and market to your site members in the future through e-mail or through network messaging.

Change Everything allows site members to follow and nudge other site members much like Facebook or Twitter. These feature can help create inter-personal relationships between site members and increase the sense of community and the perceived value of your website.

The bottom line

If your credit union is considering a challenge marketing program, think long and hard before creating a website that requires users to create an account in order to interact with it. And, if you decide to require user accounts, make sure that you are delivering extra value to your site members.

Next up: building your program on a suitable web platform.

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11/22/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 4: jump start your program

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward

Using traditional and non-traditional marketing to jump start your program

In Field of Dreams, an Iowa corn farmer hears voices and interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields. He does, the Chicago Black Sox come and everyone lives happily ever after.

Let's adjust the previous paragraph to better reflect a typical credit union's social media strategy.

In Credit Union Blog of Dreams, a credit union marketer hears voices (likely the voices of her CEO and board) and interprets them as a command to build a blog. She does, thousands of new credit union members come and everyone lives happily ever after.

Field of Dreams is a wonderful work of fiction that, unfortunately, doesn't translate well in the real world of marketing. There is a problem with the-advertising-is-dead-social-media-is-the-replacement marketing strategy that is being touted as of late. If you add another website to the billions of other websites on the Internet, you cannot expect anybody to magically find it. You need to tell your marketplace that it exists and that there is a good reason to visit and to keep visiting.

There has to be more to your plan than signing up for a Twitter account and attempting to follow thousands of people who are unlikely to reciprocate.

Start off with a big local bang

An integrated marketing strategy that includes social media is what you need to get your challenge marketing program off the ground.

Go back to the vision that I discussed in Part 3. Your challenge marketing program's vision should detail your target market, your product offer and your goals. Once you know these three things, you can begin to build an appropriate media and public relations plan to launch your program.

Build a master consideration list

Start with an unbiased consideration list of every available media option in your area. Add three columns: must have, consider and definitely not. Meet with everyone involved in your project, including your team and your agency (or agencies, if more than one is involved) and discuss the pros and cons of each line item.

You will need to share your budget in advance so everyone at the table is basing their input on not only target market appropriateness but also with an understanding of how deep your plan can really be. There is no point considering TV if you don't have significant dollars to invest and there is also no point in picking 20 items from the list if you can't do any one of them well. If your budget is limited, consider doing just three or four different items really well.

Here is a good start to your list, but by no means should you limit your considerations to these choices.

• TV
• Radio
• Newspaper
• Magazines
• Outdoor
  • Billboards
  • Transit
  • Mobile advertising
  • Wall projections
• Sponsorships
• Cinema advertising
• Personal invitations
• Text messaging
• Events
• Online banner advertising
• Social network advertising (Facebook, MySpace, MSN, others)
• Google Adwords
• Street team activations
• Promotional items
• Direct mail
• In-branch point-of-purchase
  • Posters
  • Brochures
  • Plasma screens
  • Floor decals
  • Window decals
  • ATM screens
• Statement stuffers
• Statement advertising
• Ads on your primary website and online banking site
• E-mail
• Newsletters
• Press releases
  • Traditional
  • Social media releases
• Appearances and interviews
• Word of mouth
• Social media activity
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • LinkedIn
  • Microsoft Live
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Viddler
  • Ustream
  • Yelp
  • 12 Seconds
  • Commenting on other blogs
  • Asking for reciprocal blogroll listings

Building your plan

If you are launching a youth-centred program, your plan will likely be light on traditional media and heavier online and with guerilla tactics. That doesn't mean that you should automatically rule out newspapers and radio. In fact, university newspapers and college radio might be really popular and affordable in your area.

Traditional media outlets are very hungry for advertising dollars and are getting more aggressive—and creative—with their advertising packages. A great idea is to meet with representatives from competing media outlets and give them each an RFP that describes your program. They may be so excited about getting involved with your unique promotion that they come back with ideas that you hadn't considered yet.

Transversely, if you are targeting Baby Boomers with a program like Filene's Big Idea Challenge, you may need to invest heavier in traditional media and lighter in online and guerilla tactics. Again, that doesn't mean that you should automatically rule out a localized Google Adwords, Facebook or LinkedIn advertising buy or guerilla street team activations.

For Young & Free Alberta, we had the luxury of a decent media budget. In year one, approximately 60% of the budget was invested in online advertising on both Facebook and MSN (MSN is very popular in Canada), while the rest of the budget was split between radio, outdoor billboards, direct mail and in-branch POP. In year two we didn't do any billboards, but we added in exciting new tactics including our Y&F GoMobile Truck and wall illuminations.

What Are You Saving For? was launched on a very small budget. All of the creative was done in-house and there was no external media purchased. Matt and his team relied on point-of-purchase displays, word-of-mouth, press releases, statement advertising, press coverage and cross linking from other promotions like their Football Pick 'em videos and from their corporate website.

As I mentioned in Part 3, Change Everything was a just one component of Vancity's 2006 brand advertising campaign. With a reported annual seven-figure budget for brand advertising, Change Everything was able to piggy back on this investment and to gain mass-market momentum through TV, radio and print advertising plus significant press coverage. William and his team also pre-launched the site to a hand-picked group of about 500 social media and social change advocates.

Be clear on what you are advertising

If your program has a product tie-in, you will have at least two key messages that you are promoting at the launch of your challenge marketing program:

1. Come enter and participate in our challenge
2. We have a great new banking product

My advice is to centre your message around getting your creators involved (remember the 90-9-1 Principle). Your challenge program's success is hinged upon getting people interested in participating in your challenge. Your product offer should always be there in the background, but doesn't necessarily need to be the star of a Facebook ad.

Monitor and adjust your plan each year

Because your challenge marketing program is a multi-year endeavor, you have the luxury of experimenting and refining your plan over time. If you find that direct mail yields very little return in year one, either try a different message, a different format or drop it altogether in year two. Make sure to monitor and measure every piece of your integrated marketing plan and be honest with everyone involved about how each component is performing.

On-going promotion

I recommend that your initial media plan cover the first two to four months. After that, your program should be up and running and you can rely on a steady volume of interesting content to keep the community going. With Young & Free Alberta, we advertised for an eight-week period in the fall of 2007 to find our 2008 Spokesperson. Once Larissa Walkiw was in place, there was no supporting media for her nine-month term. Interestingly, web traffic, participation and new account openings continued to grow throughout the year.

Going back into the year-two search phase, Servus Credit Union (formerly Common Wealth) invested approximately the same budget again to find the 2009 Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson. This additional investment in media has resulted in a sustained 50% increase in day-to-day traffic on the site.

Your supporting media plan is as important as the challenge itself. Taking the time to plan is well worth it.

Next up: should you require a log-in to participate?

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11/21/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell

 

Designing a challenge, a product offer and a reward that are sure to ignite a niche group and align with your credit union's goals and objectives

A great alternative to the three-month, throw-away promotion

Credit unions are notorious for running two- to three-month promotions. Retirement investments in the Winter, loans and mortgages in the Spring and deposits in the Fall. All with new creative and offers that are used once. Go to any industry awards show and you'll see what I mean. Rows and rows of great creative that hits the trash after one season.

A challenge marketing program has the potential to last for years. It can either be year-round or it can be an annual three- to four-month promotion. Because the creativity comes from participation, the story will constantly evolve and take your program in new directions. Isn't this a better idea than reinventing the wheel over and over again? I have been asked a number of times how many years can a Young & Free Program last. My flippant answer: if the reality TV shows like Survivor can do 18 seasons, I'm sure Young & Free can last for at least five annual spokesperson searches!

Start with your vision

The best place to start is by writing a brief vision for your challenge marketing program. This vision should detail your target market, your product offer—and as I said in part 2, don't be afraid to tie a product offer to your program—and the goals you are trying to achieve. Not only will this guide your team in the creation of your challenge program, it is also great information to include on an about page on your website. Unless you clearly state what you are doing, new site visitors may be left scratching their heads and quickly depart.

Take a look at the about pages on the three example sites that I mentioned in part 1.

• Members Credit Union's What Are You Saving For?
• Servus Credit Union's Young & Free Alberta
• Vancity's Change Everything

Each of these about pages clearly states what each program is about, what they are trying to achieve and what they are selling (if anything).

Who are you challenging?

Have you ever heard of the 90-9-1 Principle? It's a simple principle that illustrates how users participate in social communities.

• 90% of users are the "audience," or lurkers. These people tend to read or observe, but don’t actively contribute.
• 9% of users are "editors," sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread (i.e. leaving comments on a blog or participating in a poll), but rarely create content from scratch.
• 1% of users are "creators," driving large amounts of the social group’s activity. More often than not, these people are driving a vast percentage of the site’s new content, threads and activity.

For example, just 0.16% of all visitors to YouTube upload videos and 0.2% of visitors to Flickr upload photos. And, over 50% of all the Wikipedia edits are done by just 0.7% of the users or only 524 people (Source: 90-9-1.com).

If your challenge concept requires a large quantity of creators, you will need a large number of people to draw from. Your credit union will either need to be very large with existing communication channels that you can promote your program through or your initiative will need a significant promotional budget to drive traffic and continued participation.

Both Change Everything and What Are You Saving For? encourage people to sign up for a site user account and actively participate in their communities on an ongoing basis. Both initiatives seem to be successful at achieving this goal.

It is not surprising that Change Everything is successful at engaging a large number of creators and editors. It draws from a 400,000-member credit union, significant ongoing brand advertising and a large metropolitan area with a passionate group of advocates for change. Not to mention Kate Dugas, a skilled and passionate community manager who's job it is to encourage both the 2,000 Vancity employees and the community at large to continue to participate in Change Everything.

It is somewhat surprising that What Are You Saving For? is as popular as it is with only 50,000 members to draw from and very little, if any, ongoing marketing support. I would suspect this is because of the tireless work of its creator, Matt Davis, and his small marketing and communications team actively growing the community through consistent communication and encouragement. I'm sure Matt will enlighten us with his recipe for success in the comments. Right Matt?

If your credit union is smaller or if you are targeting a small niche group, consider a challenge concept that requires a smaller group of creators to lead the charge.

Young & Free Alberta requires a small number of creators to apply and to compete for the Young & Free Spokesperson job. These people rally their supporters (the editors and the audience) to show support by posting blog comments. Other ways that Young & Free Alberta encourages participation is through polling, voting, submitting calendar events and adding to the Free Stuff Directory. These light-weight activities are appealing to the lurker-types. During the second-year search we received almost 600 blog comments in October alone!

Your challenge concept

Your challenge must drive a select group of people to action and, ideally, it should naturally grow from your credit union's focus and brand. It should also align with your credit union's goals and objectives.

The Change Everything website was spurred by the spirit behind Vancity's new campaign. Change Everything actually had its start as the slogan for Vancity's latest ad campaign. The key message: you can change everything if you change your bank. The ads reflect the credit union's environmental and community focus. "Vancity is guided by a commitment to corporate social responsibility, and to improve the quality of life in the communities where we live and work." This lead to the simple challenge that guides the site, "If you want to make changes—in your own life, in your neighbourhood or in your world—then Change Everything is the site for you. It's fun, it's free and it's a great way to work towards positive change for you and our community."

For Members Credit Union, this challenging question, "What are you saving for?" drives the program. Its goal is to help people set savings goals, develop a disciplined and systematic savings habit and build a corresponding community of like-minded people as a support network. "By laughing, crying and discussing how we each approach this topic together, we should find it much easier to save together. So what are you saving for?"

Young & Free Alberta is about three things—giving young people a voice, giving young people a head start and giving young people useful information. "We launched Young & Free because we felt strongly that young people were not being well served by large faceless financial institutions. Young people in Alberta didn't have a voice when it came to getting what they needed financially. So we launched a search for a spokesperson and gave that person a platform: the Young & Free Alberta website."

As you can see, these challenges are very different from one another, but all are enticing to a select group of people. For Change Everything, that group is not defined by age, but defined by a shared belief in change. For What Are You Saving For?, the common bond is the hope of achieving a small savings goal with the encouragement of others and encouraging others in return. For Young & Free Alberta, the group is defined by age and the belief in a financial institution that is finally listening and appreciating young people.

Whatever your challenge is, it needs to spark active participation by a select group of passionate people who get it.

Encourage participants to get some creative skin in the game

The Internet has enabled everybody to flex their inner Spielberg and Shakespeare. Your challenge should encourage people to get creative and display their hidden talents. Give the 1% creator segment a chance to connect with like-minded people, express their ideas publicly, gain Internet fame and glory or simply get their creative freak on! In return, your credit union will reap the rewards of increased attention, traffic and potential opportunities to engage with members and potential members and increase its sales opportunities.

Participants should be able to submit something that you can display on your website for the public to get involved with, such as a video, a photo or a blog post. User-generated video contests are very popular and can make for very entertaining content provided that the challenge is original and meaningful. The directions that you can point participants in are infinite and we'll get into some specific ideas later in this series.

Your product

I highly recommend tying a product offer to your challenge (and so will your CFO). However, it is not necessary.

The content on Change Everything does not mention Vancity's products or services. In fact, it rarely mentions Vancity! This was a conscious decision by William Azaroff, the site's mastermind. Vancity has the luxury of having extremely high top-of-mind brand awareness and a well-known purpose throughout the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. For site users, the dots are easily connected and Vancity, no doubt, gains business by way of the site. However, Change Everything's success is not measured by product sales. Its success is measured by reaching the community and building brand engagement through social change.

If you are going to offer a product with your challenge program, make it good. Make it relevant, different and desirable. Not every product that you come out with can be a big money maker for your credit union. Don't focus too much time on making it a hugely profitable product, it's more important that it's relevant to the audience.

Look at it as an investment in new members and a way to reward existing members. Use this opportunity to start long-term relationships that you can grow with active and on-going cross-selling of other, more profitable products and services.

What Are You Saving For? has a complementary savings account. It gives account holders all the tools they need to be able to meet their savings goal and includes a generous dividend rate, budgeting tools, a support network and the financial expertise of the credit union.

Young & Free Alberta has a free and unlimited-transaction chequing account for those aged 17 to 25. This is relevant and desirable because no other financial institution in Alberta offers a free account to this age group.

Your reward

You don't have to go big, but it sure helps! For Young & Free Alberta, the carrot to get involved in the annual challenge is huge. An amazing full-time job for a year with a great salary, a bag full of electronics to keep and a car to drive for a year definitely gets the attention of young people! It also gets the attention of the press. To date, Young & Free Alberta has received more than $400,000 in unpaid media coverage in its first 13 months.

For Change Everything, the reward is more subtle. It comes in the form of personal satisfaction. A public resolution to make a big change and then documenting the achievement of that change is liberating and empowering. Take EnviroWoman for example. She publicly documented her own challenge to live plastic free for an entire year. There are countless stories like this on Change Everything.

On top of this, Vancity runs ongoing challenge contests to reward it's community members. The Viva la Resolution and Change Something are two examples of interesting challenges with modest rewards that help to further engage community members.

What Are You Saving For? challenges and rewards site participation throughout the year. The two main challenge contests are the WAYSF Sweepstakes and the annual Biggest Saver Contest.

These are just some ideas of ways to continuously engage your program's creators, editors and audience. The options really are limitless. Hopefully this has inspired some original thinking on your part as you consider your own unique challenge marketing program.

Next up: using traditional and non-traditional marketing to jump start your program.

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11/15/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 2: it's OK to sell on the social web

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction

Getting comfortable with sales and marketing on the social web and how to keep things local

The social web is a great place for listening

Before we dive in to defining your challenge, your product offer and your reward, let's talk about the role of social media within your challenge marketing program.

The authors of Groundswell divide corporate social media activity into these main categories.

• Research = Listening
• Marketing = Talking
• Sales = Energizing
• Support = Supporting
• Development = Embracing

To date, credit unions that have entered the social web have primarily concentrated on listening. There is a deeply held belief by credit unions (and by social media strategists in general) that the social web is not a place to talk about products and services. It is widely believed that it is best used to listen and connect with members and potential members. It is a place to be open, transparent and conversational. In turn, this will demonstrate that your organization cares about its members and this display of caring will compel people to do business with your credit union.

RichardAtDell and ComcastCares on Twitter are two great examples of this strategy in action. I estimate that 90% of Richard's and Frank's tweets start with an @ symbol which means that they are having direct conversations with individuals instead of blasting out marketing messages. This is a fantastic display of customer outreach.

And, the social web is a great place for talking and energizing

I strongly believe in listening and learning from your members online, but let's be honest, everyone who is online representing a company ultimately has something to sell. Why should we feel bad about that? I don't believe that marketing and sales are off limits.

My basic premise with challenge marketing is to listen and be engaging, but to also layer on top of that both talking and energizing. If executed with care and conviction in an open and honest way against the backdrop of a really relevant product and a really compelling challenge, members and non-members will be receptive to your subtle marketing and sales messages.

Think Small World Web

Before opening a dozen accounts on every social application, think about how you will use each one of them locally in conjunction with your challenge marketing program. Think about your credit union's niche and your promotion's target market. What is the purpose of the particular social media application that you are considering? How will you keep it relevant and fresh? Most credit unions have a small-geographic footprint, so do some research on how many people are using a particular service locally before diving in.

For example, if you are going to create a Facebook page, YouTube channel or participate on Twitter as part of your program, try to grow your connections locally. Go with the most mainstream choices first. We chose to use YouTube over more feature-rich video sharing sites like Vimeo and Viddler for our Young & Free challenge programs because we knew that we would have the potential to connect with more local people on the most popular video-sharing site in the world.

However, don't be afraid to experiment beyond the mainstream. We have encouraged both of our new Spokesters—Myles in Alberta and DeAndre' in Texas—to play with 12seconds.tv, a very obscure new video application that is still in private alpha.

Building a large local following is not easy and takes time, but the more that you, your staff and those interested and participating in your challenge can grow your local following, the more powerful these connections will become over time.

Next up: your challenge, your product and your reward.

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11/13/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 1: An introduction

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface

Moving beyond passive contesting and throw-away promotions

Social media marketing advocates will tell you that traditional media is dead. They will have you believe that TV, radio and print can be completely replaced with social media and word-of-mouth marketing. The promise of Web 2.0 will conquer all.

To perpetuate the myth, credit union marketers are being bombarded at industry conferences and in trade publications with the notion that all they need to do is start a blog and the millions (if not billions) of people online will find and flock to their lovable institutions.

There is this sense that if you are not involved online on this newfangled social web, you don't exist.

At Currency, we agree that the social web is extremely exciting and presents an opportunity to connect like never before. We agree that dialogue trumps monologue. However, we do not agree that social media is a replacement for all other forms of marketing. We believe that there is a time and place for many different marketing approaches.

The social media honeymoon is over

Countless credit unions have attempted to join the online conversation only to find that no one is interested in talking with them. The hard reality is that posting newsletter articles and press releases to a corporate blog or creating a Facebook page does not inspire conversation or incite action.

You need to ignite a following and create real excitement. The goal with challenge marketing is to draw considerable attention to your credit union by throwing down a unique challenge stoked with a significant reward and by encouraging people to creatively participate, compete and connect. Challenge marketing can help your credit union move beyond passive contesting and throw-away promotions and enable your credit union to really make a noise online and offline in your marketplace.

Traditional media is not dead and social media is not the cure-all. You have a far greater chance of finding marketing nirvana when your strategy combines traditional and non-traditional real-world activities with an online destination to create excitement and inspire action in your own backyard. Tie a relevant and differentiated product offer to your challenge and you have a legitimate recipe for success.

A YouTube contest can't save the world

Challenge marketing is not for every situation. Direct mail has its place. So does a TV or a radio brand-awareness campaign. And you don't have to mimic the latest reality TV show to promote deposits or lending at your credit union. To that end, Currency has created successful campaigns without a lick of interactivity, some of them bringing in more than $100 million in deposits.

What we are advocating is for your credit union to look at a portion of your marketing differently. Use the power of the social web to get consumers physically and emotionally involved with your credit union. Combine all of this crazy new stuff with proven marketing techniques to offer something unique in your marketplace. This is the essence of challenge marketing. It's social media marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, guerilla marketing, traditional marketing, public relations and user-generated content all rolled up into an exciting and memorable promotion.

Examples

For the rest of this series I will use three examples of challenge marketing to illustrate very different approaches with very different budgets.

• Members Credit Union's What Are You Saving For?
• Servus Credit Union's Young & Free Alberta
• Vancity's ChangeEverything.ca

I think Matt from Members would agree that his initiative would fall under the category of challenge marketing. William will take some convincing that Change Everything falls under the category of marketing! I'm sure both with correct any errors I inject along the way!

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11/10/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 0: a preface

By Tim McAlpine

It's time for a meaty series of blog posts. This is part 0 of however many it takes.

Currency Marketing works exclusively with credit unions. That I know. However, for awhile now I have been wrestling with what Currency Marketing does for credit unions. We have been the agency of record, the design studio, the brand consultancy, the interactive agency and the communications firm. To cover all of the bases, we call ourselves a credit union marketing agency. 

But then this wildly successful social-media-plus-user-generated-video-Internet-contest-spokester-extravaganza-campaign-that-never-ends-marketing-mash-up-program took us in a new direction and has given us a new competency in something very exciting and very different.

At first, I thought it was social media marketing, but that's not enough. Social media is just one success factor. The more I think about it, the more I like the term challenge marketing.

In fact, I feel so strongly about this type of marketing approach that I have changed the positioning of our firm. This is what we do.

Super-charged credit union member engagement. Driving product sales and member growth through powerful challenge marketing programs.

If you don't believe me, check out our new homepage.

I will remember 2008 as The Year of Dozens of Long Flights. I prefer the aisle seat, because I can easily grab my laptop from the overhead compartment and plunk away when the feeling hits me. On a few of the longer flights, I have been attempting to write a white paper that reverse engineers Young & Free Alberta's success.

But I realize now that I work better in blog post chunks. So, I am going to bash out a series of posts that identify the success factors of challenge marketing. And, ideally, you the reader will challenge me in the comments and in the end I will have what I need to put it all together and have the white paper that I have been hoping for.

Here are the sections that I will write about:

1. An introduction to challenge marketing—moving beyond passive contesting and throw-away promotions
2. Getting comfortable with sales and marketing on the social web and how to keep things local
3. Designing a challenge, a product offer and a reward that are sure to ignite a niche group and align with your credit union's goals and objectives
4. Using traditional and non-traditional marketing to jump start your program
5. Should you require a log-in to participate?
6. Building your program on a suitable web platform
7. Creating a steady stream of entertaining and educational content
8. Encouraging multiple levels of participation that build and reward an army of followers
9. Setting participation goals and consistently measuring
10. Allocating appropriate resources and support and figuring out who should be involved

Does that sound like a good plan to you? I am sure I have missed something, but 10 parts will be a great start. And now that I have put it out there, I have to complete it.

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10/23/2008

Kids today...

... are amazing (Part 2).

By Tim McAlpine

Last year during the voting phase of the inaugral spokesperson search for Young & Free Alberta, I blogged about how impressed I was with our three finalists, Larissa, Paula and Shane. Fast forward one year later and I have the exact same feelings. But this time the feeling is doubled because we have twice as many finalists!

What amazes me most is how far above and beyond the minimum requirements each of our applicants is taking their campaign. A Young & Free finalist is required to create an application video and blog post plus answer our video challenge. That's it. Everything else is completely up to them.

Below I have bolded some of my favourite pieces of content from each finalist. The effort, creativity and drive being displayed is inspiring. Each one is qualified and deserving of the job.

The voting phase for TDECU's Young & Free Texas Spokesperson search ends Friday at midnight. Amy, DeAndre' and Jason have been going crazy for the last two weeks driving votes for their campaigns. Just look at the volume of creative content being churned out.

Name: Jason Smith Age: 22 City: Houston, Texas » App video and blog » Facebook event » Flickr Photostream » Personal blog » Queen music video » Podcast » Twitter profile » Video: Thank You » Blog: Greatest things online » Blog: A word from Jason » Blog: A little tip from Jason » Video challenge » Blog: Indexed » Blog: Credit Score? » Song: TDECU is the place

Name: Amy Acreman Age: 19 City: Houston, Texas » App video and blog » Facebook group » Flickr Photostream » Podcast » Twitter profile » MySpace page » Personal Blog » Video: Hello from Amy! » Blog: Amy's favorite things » Blog: Check this out! » Blog: Money savers!! » Blog: Gas prices » Blog: Google's free? » Blog: Goodbye things » Blog: Presidential election » Video challenge » Blog: Making the MOVIE » Blog: Halloween! » Blog: Amy's Thing

Name: DeAndre' Upshaw Age: 21 City: Waco, Texas » App video and blog » Facebook event » Y&F campaign blog » Podcast 1 » Podcast 2 » Podcast 3 » Plurk profile » Video: Thanks! » Blog: Found on the Internets » Blog: Liveplurking tonight » Blog: Y&F Halloween » Blog: Got A Sec? » Video challenge » Blog: Awkward moments » Blog: Well, woot to that! » Blog: It takes two... » Blog: Wayback Machine » Blog: Brought to you by #1,506 » Blog: Stayin' Alive » Video: PSA » Blog: Free for Me!

And, the voting phase for Common Wealth Credit Union second annual Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson search ends Monday. James, Jenna Mae and Myles efforts have been equally impressive.

Name: James Morrison Age: 20 City: Edmonton » App video and blog » Personal blog » Video challenge

Name: Jenna Mae Togado Age: 22 City: Calgary » App video and blog » Personal blog » Facebook group » Video challenge

Name: Myles Peterman Age: 18 City: Edmonton » App video and blog » Personal blog » Facebook group » Flickr photostream » Plurk profile » Twitter profile » Podcast 1 » Blog: Poof... it happened » Blog: On the campaign trail » Podcast 2 » Blog: Frugality saves » Video challenge » Video: Thank you » Blog: Wednesday movies

I especially love the incredible video work. I'll say it again—from this 39-year-old Gen Xer, the future of today's youth is not just bright, it is brilliant!

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